What to do about Wiki Tags that Reference "The Great Stack Overflow Tag Cleanup" now that the page on MSO is AWOL (404)?

Question

I was looking at the context tag, which said:

DO NOT USE - Removed as part of https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128315/the-great-stack-overflow-tag-question-cleanup-of-2012.

I've updated the page so it now reads:

DO NOT USE - Removed as part of https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/128315/the-great-stack-overflow-tag-question-cleanup-of-2012. That page has now (2012-08-21) been removed, leaving you without much information about what to do now. Do not use the tag; consider removing it from existing questions.

But that isn't very helpful to anyone who was not involved. And there are more than one thousand context questions, so the tag isn't going away any time soon.

(Incidentally, the context tag is still being actively used: 3 in the last 24 hours (though I've now untagged those 3, leaving 'context' out of the tagging altogether), 1 yesterday, and 3 on 17th August, ...)

Two questions arise:

1. Do we need the 'Great Stack Overflow Tag Wiki Cleanup' to remove the references to the defunct 'Great Stack Overflow Tag Cleanup' URL? How many other Tag Wiki entries have 404 URLs because of this?
2. What is an appropriate replacement Wiki text for tags that have been ... deprecated.

(I'm aware of What happened with the "Great Stack Overflow tag cleanup of 2012"? question. When I last looked, it just said that the URL went 404 because it was no longer needed. But that doesn't address the remaining references to the non-existent.)

Answer 1

I went through these tags quickly, with the following rules:

• If there's a clear, consistent meaning apparent from its use, I removed the "DO NOT USE" - there may be some misuse, but that's not worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

• If there's no clear, consistent meaning apparent from its use on the site, I burninate the tag.

• If it's a meta tag, I burninate the tag.

As a result, the following tags were removed:

• update Sadly, this was used far more by folks trying to update something - anything - than in questions about the SQL Update statement.

• error-message Essentially a meta tag in most cases.

• interview-questions A pure meta tag. Many of these should probably be removed, but some interview questions are perfectly valid questions on their own; either way, the classification of these did little for them.

• extension Wildly varying uses.

• remote Very inconsistent usage.

• output Very inconsistent usage.

• display Most consistent usage was for the CSS attribute, but this also included the minority of the questions.

• value Extremely ambiguous.

• language At least three completely different meanings with no clear winner.

• bugs Primary use was to denote bugs in code being posted.

• disable A favorite of folks who copy their titles into the tag box.

• automatic For the people (...who copy their titles into the tag box).

• management Several disparate uses, none consistent.

• empty ...is the tag box, until you copy your title into it.

• child Yes, I burninated child. Infanticide has never been easier!

• values A tag list has multiple values, after you copy your title into it.

• name rarely used for anything useful or consistent.

• self-improvement meta tag

• length is a problem you might have to contend with if you routinely copy your title into the tag field. Solution: shorter titles!

• features Largest cohesive usage was for SharePoint. Majority involved a transformation of titles into tags.

• rectangle, online, box, horizontal, large, pause, start, vertical, team, power, disabled, community, accuracy, attack, technology, force... tags, titles, something something

• challenge meta tag.

• practice meta tag.

• project-ideas meta tag.

• experience ambiguous

Now...

Please care for the widows and orphans!

(for a lot of these, you'll want to just flag for deletion)

Answer 2

Edit the tag wiki to state which tags should be used as replacement for context, if any. (For example: if used in combination with android, retag to android-context. etc.)

If there is a specific meta question about this tag, link to it.

If the tag is indicative of questions that should be closed, say that.

If the tag is absolutely useless, remove it if it's only used on a handful of questions, or make a meta post requesting removal by a developer otherwise.

(This is what should have been done in the first place. Now we're doing the Great Stack Overflow Tag Cleanup Cleanup...)

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As an example, here's what I just wrote in the tag wiki. The idea is to give pointers to the tag that people should use instead. There are probably more than I don't know about, please edit the tag wiki if you see other cases that should be mentioned (browse [context] -[android] and look for common meanings of context).

DO NOT USE - Deprecated as part of "The great Stack Overflow tag/question cleanup of 2012". Please use a more specific tag instead, such as:

• android-context for Android contexts
• contextmenu for context menus
• httpcontext or just http if your question is about HttpContext objects in C#, Java or PHP
• scope if your question is e.g. which function (for example) a variable can be used in
• etc.

If you mean to refer to the concept of contexts, rather than to some technical phrase that contains the word context, you should probably use other, more informative tags.

Consider removing the tag from existing questions. Replace it by a more appropriate tag if appropriate. If you edit a question, please don't just remove the tag; while you're at it, see if there's any other issue to fix: missing tags, spelling and grammar mistakes, bad formatting, vague title, …